To Sir, with Love - Lauren Layne Page 0,52
I’m not sure I ever really admitted it to myself until recently. I don’t blame you. Either of you.” I look at Caleb. “But I also can’t keep living for Dad, or for you guys. I have to live for me.”
“I respect that,” Caleb says quietly. “Though I still get to feel like an ass for acting like a baby about keeping the store open, when I didn’t do much at all to help.”
“Same,” Lily says. She inhales and holds her breath for a second. “The deal is good?” She looks at me again.
“It’s fair,” I say. “And it provides severance for the staff, which is most important to me.”
She nods. “Okay. I trust you.”
“Me too,” Caleb says, then looks at me and grins. “But now I’m dying to know… what will you do?”
“I have no idea,” I say honestly. “But the severance will give me a bit of a buffer to figure it out.”
Everyone nods, but there’s a lingering silence that hangs in the air. Not awkward, not angry. Just a little bit sad as we all come to grips with what lies ahead. I thought I’d made peace with my dad’s passing, but this feels a bit like saying goodbye to him all over again.
Lily is the first to break the silence. “So, we’re doing this?”
“Just tell me where to sign,” Caleb says. His smile slips. “Damn. It’s sad though, isn’t it? End of an era.”
“No, no, no,” Lily says, waving her hands. “We’re not going to think like that. This is the right thing to do, and deep down, we all know it.”
She’s right. I do know it. And so I let my family try to distract me from the fact that I’m about to be unemployed with pizza and wine. I continue to badger my brother about meeting his girlfriend.
I smile. I laugh.
When I leave my sister’s place, I feel the lightest I’ve felt in years.
And then I get on the subway and see the latest message from Sir.
My dear Lady,
First, my apologies for the delayed response. Out of respect for everything you are to me, I wanted to give your suggestion the consideration it deserves.
I’m tempted. You have no idea how tempted, how long I’ve wondered what you look like, what it would be like to hear your voice, to see your face as we talk about nothing. And everything.
But it’s with immense regret—if nothing else, please believe my regret—that I must decline your offer. Not for always, but for now, the time isn’t right for me to introduce a new variable into my life.
Please understand. Please.
I hope we might continue on as we have been. If not, if you’re looking for something else, something more… I’ll understand.
Yours in regret,
Sir
* * *
To Sir, with reassurances,
Please don’t think a thing of it. Of course we can go on as we’ve been! Here, I’ll get us started. An important topic I find it hard to believe we haven’t discussed yet: reality TV. Is there anything better? The drama? The suspense? The sheer juiciness of it all…
Lady
* * *
My dear Lady,
Oh GOD.
Yours in dissent,
Sir
Seventeen
I don’t want to say I’ve hit rock bottom. That would imply I’m at home in my PJs, digging into another pint of pistachio gelato, with no bra and hair that hasn’t encountered shampoo in quite some time.
I’m fine. I am. My brain is very sure of this.
Sir is just some guy whose face I’ve never seen. Sebastian is just some businessman whose interest in me was purely financially motivated. I never had either of them, so I haven’t lost either of them.
So why does my heart hurt?
There is a bittersweet silver lining to my personal life crashing and burning. My professional life is also crashing and burning, but at least I’m in the driver’s seat there. With every longtime customer I’ve said goodbye to, with every discount sign I’ve hung, with every box of champagne I’ve carefully packaged to sell to one of the vendors who’ve been buying out our inventory, I feel a little more sure that this is right.
Scary. And sad. But I feel in my bones that this sharp turn in my life’s path is the right one.
I smile at a young forty-something couple as I hand them a crisp white paper bag. They’re celebrating her one-year anniversary of being cancer-free and were thrilled when I pointed them to a particularly nice steal on our going-out-of-business table. A few of our nearby competitors bought out full and half cases, but for